Talk
by butterflymind
Summary: Future fic. The problem with people is they need to create stories around things that are real. Penny/Sheldon.


People talked. It was just one of those things Penny supposed, she had given up complaining about it when she found that envy made even people she thought she could trust less than sympathetic. 'Well you always wanted to be a star' her friends would say and she was sure she could hear smiles and schadenfreude in their voices. She didn't call those friends any more; she realised that they probably held that against her too. Sighing she folded her shirt against her chest and stared out of the window, across the beach and the bay. Looking at this view, from this house and this life she supposed she could see their point. Six years ago she would have agreed with them, seen the same 'poor little rich girl' tint to her own behaviour. Six years ago a lot of things were different. Six years ago the only view of the bay she could see involved driving her car to the beach side parking lot and gazing out of the window.

But this view was hers. Well theirs, but she had wanted it more than him; he had still tended to block the windows with whiteboards until her gentle persistence in moving them back against the walls finally got through to him. She was the one who liked to gaze out at the ocean and leave the windows open so she could hear the breakers crashing on the shore. The sea was calming but still alien to her, an environment about as far removed from her childhood as it was possible to get. Her fingers brushed across the table that stood by the window and inadvertently touched the open magazine that was lying there. She glanced down and immediately wished that she hadn't, everything she was avoiding came rushing back at her with the power of the breakers outside the window. She picked up the magazine and tossed it at the bed behind her, turning angrily to follow it to where it lay. It was still open at the page she had been looking at it, a ring of red magic marker from her publicist. Or the studio's publicist, someone's publicist at any rate. There was a note in red pen above the ring, 'Can we do anything about this?' She flicked the magazine closed but it did no good, the note still stared accusingly at her even behind the closed cover. Opening the magazine again she looked at the article the publicist had ringed, for the second time or the tenth time or the hundredth time, she wasn't really sure. It was one of the gossip pages, barely longer than a caption for a photograph of her on a red carpet at some awards ceremony. She only vaguely remembered the photo being taken, it was one of many shots they took as she left the building, intent only on getting to the car and going home. She was smiling but looked tired and just slightly impatient, an accurate reflection of how she had been feeling at the time. Her eyes drifted from the image to the words and she scowled, reading them over again.

_'**What a Coop-out!**_

_Penelope Cooper was seen exiting early from the People's choice awards last night, looking tired and emotional and not in the company of her husband, the renowned physicist Dr Sheldon Cooper. In fact, we can't remember the last time the couple were seen together.'_

Penny shut the magazine cover again. This time going as far as to fold it in half and put it in the trash can in the corner of the bedroom. She walked out of the room and across the landing, down the stairs and to the kitchen. Opening the fridge she raised her eyebrows and realised Sheldon had been organising again, unless the cheese had stacked itself in date order. She pulled out a can of diet coke and settled at the counter, flicking open the script that had come in the mail this morning, along with a note from her agent to the effect that the part was hers if she wanted it. More and more work came to her like that these days and she had begun to realise why it had been so hard for her to break into this business. Everything was a closed shop, a closed system as Sheldon had called it, with scripts bouncing between the same actors and directors and producers and studios. Every now and then fresh blood was required, for a few precious moments the gates opened and people like her stepped through and were absorbed into the machine. She wondered when she had gotten so cynical. She had thrown the rest of the mail on the counter when she brought it in this morning and only paused now to look at it. Three letters for Sheldon, two from addresses she recognised and one that was most likely what he referred to as 'petitions to his intellect' and she more succinctly as 'fan-mail'. He got more of that since the book was published, although she did not honestly believe that most of the people who read it had much more idea of what he had written than she did. 'Dr Cooper's work on String theory falls into the same category as many of the great works of quantum mechanics' she remembered one reviewer writing, 'in that if you think you understand it, you probably don't.' Sheldon had complained, pointed out that quantum mechanics was perfectly understandable and in practical use in transistors all over the world. Then he stuck the review on the fridge where it remained for six months. She sipped her coke, stacking Sheldon's mail in a neat pile he would find pleasing and returned to the script.

For ten minutes she attempted to read, eyes skimming the pages without really absorbing the words printed on them. Her mind was still upstairs with the magazine, returning again and again to the photograph and the caption and the publicist's little note. 'Can we do anything about this?' She wondered who the 'we' were; her and Sheldon? Her and the publicist? The publicist and Sheldon? The last thought almost made her laugh out loud, her minds eye conjuring the picture of a studio publicist trying to explain the concept of image management to Sheldon, convincing him that he must be seen in public with his wife because the gossip columnists demanded that all star marriages be played out in front of the cameras. She could hear him asking why in that slightly superior tone, raising his eyebrows and folding his arms across his chest. She was almost willing to arrange such a meeting, just to see the looks on their faces. Apart from anything else, five minutes of conversation with Sheldon should convince them that never letting the world's press within earshot of him was by far the best idea even if he did want to go to an award ceremony, which he emphatically did not. The agreement had been in place since the early days, she didn't have to attend fund-raisers and conferences where she would be deathly bored and even the décor reminded her that she was not his intellectual equal. He didn't have to attended parties and award ceremonies where he would be puzzled and frightened and that reminded him that she was good at the human interactions he would never properly understand. Oscars and Nobel prizes were exceptions to the rule, but neither of those had happened yet.

Giving up on the script Penny moved to the couch, pulling the comforter from the back to wrap herself in it, even though she was not cold. It smelt slightly of Sheldon, he often wrapped himself in it, claiming her habit of leaving the windows open made the house unbearably cold but never actually shutting them himself. It was an invisible concession, one of hundreds she had learnt to spot over the years, the slight inconsistencies in his behaviour that were hidden like a spot the difference picture. It had taken her a long time to understand that they held a pattern and a logic all his own; that he approached her with the same sideways screw-ball logic that made him so good at what he did. With her he showed the same directness of purpose, the same disregard for what should be done when he could see there was a better way. Once she understood that she never doubted that he loved her. But he just didn't do the public eye, she could remember being so scared when her first movie came out, terrified that he would spook like the baby deer his mother had warned them about and run away from her. Instead he had waited patiently for her to come home from every premier and every party, on the sofa of the old apartment with his laptop on his knees and a cup of cocoa for her, admonishing her that so many late nights would upset her circadian rhythms and more importantly, his. She had been irritated by his indifference, her earlier reservations forgotten. Then one night he had left the laptop open when he went to the bathroom and she saw the live internet stream of the premier red carpet in the corner of the screen, paused on her entrance. He probably didn't understand why she jumped on him the second he exited the bathroom and she wasn't going to tell him.

The warmth of the comforter was making her drowsy, the gentle wash of the ocean a soothing background lullaby. The magazine still floated in the back of her mind, an uneasy flutter that kept her from falling completely asleep. She wasn't even sure why she was so bothered, it wasn't as if this was the first gossip columnist to comment on the absence of Sheldon at public events. It certainly wasn't the first publicist to ask her if he couldn't at least make a token appearance, for the show of the thing. Sheldon knew nothing about it, such things were almost literally in a different world to him. A while ago she had been linked to one of her co-stars, a boy of twenty playing a young doctor in a movie she had landed a supporting role in. She had been caught laughing with on set with him, it was funny how different a long lens camera and a few lines of text could make something look. She hadn't told Sheldon about it and had known that was a bad idea when he came home from work pale and twitching, not quite catching her eyes. She still remembered the headline ''From physics to physicals?" because it was the first thing he said to her when he finally spoke. She remembered laughing, then stopping abruptly when she realised that he seriously thought it might be true. She was terribly angry then, throwing him out of the apartment for hours until finally she went to find him at his office where she knew he would be. He was hiding in a whiteboard jungle when she arrived, she recalled that his hands were stained with marker pen almost to his wrists. A copy of the tabloid in question was lying on his desk, someone else having clearly brought it to his attention. She had sat in a chair and waited for him to come to her, settling in the chair opposite when he had run out of ways to circumnavigate the room. She had pulled the tabloid towards them and explained gently; the need they had to make up these stories, the desire to make fairytales of real people's lives and fit them to a mould that people could understand. He replied with the importance of narrative to the human psyche, the desire of normal humans to enforce cultural stereotypes and social norms, the importance of adherence to behavioural codes in primitive societies. She had told him that was one way of looking at it, but if he called her fans primitive again he was sleeping on a too short couch. Three weeks later he asked her to marry him; she didn't ask if it was anything to do with primitive behavioural codes.

She must have slept, she realised as she opened her eyes to a room bathed softly in the glow of the lamps. Her mind slowly registered that someone must have turned on the lights and Sheldon slowly came into focus, sitting with his back to her at the table, fingers tapping softly on the laptop keyboard.

"What time is it?" She asked, finding her voice hoarse and full of sleep.

"Nearly seven." He answered without turning round, not pausing in his typing. Penny sat up and let the comforter fall away from her shoulders, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

"Dinner?" She asked, stretching out her legs.

"Take out. Fridge." He replied. There was a moment of silence, then he turned to face her. "You were asleep, I didn't want to wake you."

"That's sweet." Penny said, standing up and heading towards the kitchen.

"Don't confuse affection with self preservation." She heard him say behind her but she ignored it. Finding the promised food she heaped it onto a plate and put it in the microwave. There were footsteps in the kitchen and Sheldon appeared behind her, seating himself at the counter. "Bad magazine article?" He asked casually. She whirled round to face him.

"How did you know?" She asked,

"There's a magazine in the bedroom trash can, dated this week. You only ever throw those out if they've insulted us or your dress sense." He gave her the slightly superior smile that even after all this time made her vaguely tempted to throttle him.

"I think they liked my dress." Penny turned back to the microwave that was beeping for attention. She placed the plate on the counter and sat down next to him, unconsciously resting her leg against his.

"Are you concerned by their opinions?" Sheldon asked. Penny paused, fork halfway to her mouth.

"Yes.. No... Maybe."

"Well that would cover it." Sheldon said. He wandered away from the counter and towards the fridge, removing a can of diet coke for himself and waving another one in her general direction. She nodded and he brought it over. There was a long silence, the only sound the scraping of Penny's fork against the plate.

"I don't like the idea that they think we're not OK." She said finally. Sheldon raised his eyebrows.

"But we are OK." He replied.

"I know. But I care what other people think." 'Unlike you', she added silently.

"Why? They're most likely to be idiots. And if they think there is a rift between you and I, that just confirms my hypothesis about their intelligence." He smiled at her and she quelled a now barely susceptible impulse to scream.

"I just want them to understand how much I love you." She said, sounding pathetic even to her own ears.

"Penny, love is subjective. No matter how much affection people show for each other in public no one is ever going to understand 'how much they love each other'. At best they will just project their own feelings onto some fictional construct of us they have created."

"Sheldon, 'I love you too' would have worked."

"But you already know that." Penny sighed affectionately, sliding off her stool to stand in front of him; she leaned in but he held her still. Clearly he felt there was more he had to say. "No one's opinion matters apart from ours." He said, lecturing her gently. The thought fleeted across Penny's mind that he had gotten much better at this stuff over the years, even though he wouldn't admit it himself. " I love you and you know it." She leaned in again and this time he didn't stop her, letting her wrap her arms around him and breathe in the familiar scent. He was right and she knew it. He knew it too, but then he thought he was right no matter what he said. Still, he loved her and he didn't feel the need to prove it, there was something undeniably comforting in that. 'Let them talk.' She thought to herself, smiling against his chest. 'Let them talk.'


End file.
